Aid to fragile states: Focus on Haiti

Official development assistance to Haiti, 2002 - 2008

Net official development assistance (ODA) to Haiti has fluctuated over the past 20 years. Since 2002, it has increased substantially, with very sharp rises in both development aid and peacekeeping expenditure. The peaks in aid to Haiti are mainly a result of humanitarian aid, in particular to help the country recover from tropical storms in 1994, several hurricanes in 2008 and food riots in April 2008. Humanitarian aid as a proportion of total ODA to Haiti has increased from 0.2% in 2002 to over 20% in 2008.

As a result of the earthquake that hit Haiti in January 2010, the volume of aid provided to this country in the form of humanitarian assistance will, of course, increase.

In 2008, Haiti received USD 912 million in ODA flows from all donors combined. The largest donors were the United States, Canada, the Inter-American Bank and the European Commission. Over the period 2007-08, most of this aid was spent on social services and infrastructure, particularly health activities, government services and peacebulding activities.

Aid to fragile states increased in real terms by 9.1% in 2008, to USD 33.8 billion, representing almost 30% of global aid flows. However, aid to fragile states remains highly concentrated, with 51% of total 2008 ODA benefiting just 6 of the the 43 fragile states: Afghanistan (13.8%), Ethiopia (9.4%), Iraq (9.4%), West Bank and Gaza (7.3%), Sudan (6.8%) and Uganda (4.7%). By contrast, these countries account for only 23% of the population of the total fragile states group.

Although ODA for security-related, peace-building and state-building activities has been increasing substantially in recent years, this forms only part of the financial flows for such activities. This is because funding to peacekeeping operations (e.g., those managed by the UN, AU and NATO) does not qualify as ODA (with the exception of 6% of UN DPKO’s annual budget, which providers of southern cooperation can count as multilateral ODA). This non-ODA funding for peacekeeping operations has also increased significantly in recent years.